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‘Yes, we know. You thought he was a rat,’ she spits. ‘You’ve made that perfectly clear already, thank you, Libby.’
‘But honestly, he looks OK,’ I go on, looking at Tino in a manner that I hope appears concerned rather than (I have to be honest) ever-so-slightly revolted. And this is true, because his little rodenty face looks relaxed enough, and there are no visible injuries on his equally rodenty body. If anything, he’s looking eager to leap out of Elvira’s tight embrace, and head for … well, he’s looking extremely longingly at the sofa, actually. He must be getting all those lovely doggy whiffs of canines past coming off it.
‘Oh, what the fuck would you know? You’re not a vet!’
‘Cab here in three minutes, El,’ Ben says, slipping his phone back into his pocket. ‘We’ll have to carry on this conversation another time, Libby, OK?’
‘What? No! I mean,’ I go on, trying to sound more calm and collected than I feel, ‘I’ve been really looking forward to this meeting. There’s so much to discuss, and we don’t often get the opportunity to—’
‘Come on. It’s hardly the time.’
‘It’s certainly not.’ Elvira is stalking over to the Chesterfield to pick up her Birkin, all ready to place Tino tenderly inside it. But he’s evidently got other ideas, because he slips out of her grasp, and lurches down towards the sofa itself, where he starts to sort of … well, I don’t know what the technical term would be, but it does look very much as if he’s trying to pleasure himself against the chintzy, apricot-coloured fabric.
‘Huh,’ observes Ben, as we all gaze at Tino in a rather shocked silence for a moment. ‘Guess there must be the scent of quite a few old mutts on this thing, right?’
But I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think it’s that at all. Yes, the Chesterfield does have an aroma of dog – always has – but from the transfixed expression on Tino’s face, I think he’s picking up on something more than mere waft of long-gone Labrador, or past poodle.
I mean, animals have sixth senses, don’t they? Especially so, probably, if they’re the kind of animals that the Aztecs considered sacred.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Elvira, puce in the face now with embarrassment as well as anger, grabs Tino mid-rut and holds him firmly under her arm as she heads for the stairs. ‘We’ll discuss this incident another time, Libby,’ she tells me. ‘But suffice it to say I am Not Happy. Not Happy At All.’
Which is, to be fair, pretty much the impression I’ve got every other time I’ve met her. That she’s Not Happy about anything I have to offer. It’s just that there were those few minutes where we seemed to bond, ever so slightly, over the vintage sofa. And now it’s all gone backwards again. Actually, worse than backwards, because even if she has not been that impressed with me before now, at least I’d never tried, in her eyes, to assassinate her precious Mexican hairless dog.
‘Yeah,’ says Ben, already back on his phone again, as he follows her down the stairs towards their taxi. ‘We’ll be in touch, Libby. I’ll try to set something up, the next time I’m over.’
‘But Ben, I really—’
‘Bye, Libby,’ he says, with a wave of the hand, not even glancing back at me. ‘Oh, and try to keep up the orders for that vintage tiara, yeah? That thing’s your bread and butter. Your books are never gonna add up without it.’
The front door bangs shut behind them a couple of moments later, leaving me and my Chesterfield alone, together, in our accidentally minimalist new flat.
(#u52f0e448-187b-5c22-a1b4-1ad72853de9e)
It’s truly excellent news, from the point of view of my morale, that I’m due to have dinner with my friend Olly tonight. After the disaster of a business meeting with Ben and Elvira (actually, even calling it a ‘business meeting’ is being generous, given the amount of time we spent discussing anything business-related), I might otherwise be tempted to retreat into my pyjamas and eat the contents of my biscuit stash in self-pity. But I’ve promised Olly that I’ll meet him over at the restaurant, and we see each other so rarely these days that I don’t want to go back on my promise.
The restaurant, by the way, being his own restaurant, over in Clapham.
Nibbles.
That’s what the restaurant is called.
It’s a bit unfortunate.
Not the name Nibbles itself, as such – although I still think it’s a name better suited to a twee seaside tearoom, rather than a tapas-style restaurant successful enough to have been nominated for all kinds of Best Newcomer awards recently – but more what the choice of name represents. I mean, it was a pretty last-minute decision to call it that, and—
Talking of last-minute decisions, a text has just popped up on my phone from Olly, literally as I approach the restaurant’s front door, asking if I can meet him two doors down in the little French bistro instead. We’ve ended up needing all the tables tonight, his text informs me, and anyway it’s been a knackering day and I just want to get out of the place!!! Will get bottle of red. See you there. O xxx
Which actually suits me pretty well, too, because the slight issue of having a meal with Olly at Nibbles is, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it, the constant interruptions. Even on a night when he’s not officially working, he’s always working: there’s an issue that needs to be sorted out in the kitchen, or two of the waiting staff are threatening to kill each other, or a customer can’t live another moment without finding out the origin of his recipe for pea and mint arancini.
Peace and quiet and privacy over red wine at the bistro sound just about perfect right now. Especially since I can’t actually remember the last time I had a quiet evening and a chat with Olly. Two months ago? Closer to three? Despite the fact we’ve been close friends ever since I was thirteen, and he was Nora’s worldly wise fifteen-year-old brother; despite the fact we used to get together to set the world to rights over a bite to eat and more than a sip to drink at least twice a week, we’ve drifted a bit of late. Probably something to do with the fact that he’s busy running his restaurant, and I’m busy running my business.
Oh, and probably quite a lot, too, to do with the fact that I’m a little bit in love with him.
Actually, I’ll rephrase that, because a little bit in love sounds like I have some girlish crush, or something.
It’s not a crush. I am passionately, desperately, fervently, and worst of all secretly in love with Olly. Who – worse even than that – just so happened to be secretly in love with me, too, for almost the entirety of our friendship, until a year ago when (not unreasonably, let’s be honest) he finally gave up on me and started going out with Tash, his now-girlfriend, who works with Nora up at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
I mean, he’d planned to name the restaurant after me, and everything. Libby’s, it was meant to be called, not Nibbles. That was the last-minute decision I just told you about. I guess he’d always had this idea that he’d open a restaurant named after me one day, and that this would be the big declaration of love that he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud, and that I’d finally realize the way he felt about me. But then I was messing around thinking I was in love with my ex, Dillon O’Hara, and Olly just got tired of waiting.
It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made without knowing I was even making it.
It’s why I end up avoiding him so much these days. (While still – illogically – at the same time, desperately wanting to find ways to spend time with him.) For one thing, it often just feels too painful to have to sit there and stare down the barrel of What Should Have Been. And, for another, I’m usually scared that I might not be able to disguise my own feelings. Might end up, horror to end all horrors, jumping the table and doing to him pretty much what Tino the Mexican hairless did to my Chesterfield earlier this afternoon.
Because just look at me now, coming to a wobbly-kneed standstill as soon as I enter the bistro and see him at a corner table. He’s just so incredibly, heart-breakingly gorgeous, with his hair all mussed up from his habit of rubbing his hands through it when he’s stressed, and his big brown eyes, so open and honest, and—
‘Lib!’
Those big brown eyes have alighted on me now, and he’s getting to his feet, a huge smile on his handsome face.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he says, coming over to put his arms around me in a huge bear hug. (I inhale, as surreptitiously as I can, his scent: the familiar, warm, kitcheny smell I’ve known inside out for the last couple of decades, coupled with something spicier and more masculine that I never used to notice, but must have always been there.) ‘Come and sit down and have some wine with me. Well, actually, I decided on a bottle of champagne. Your favourite kind. I mean, we’re celebrating your moving into the new flat, right?’
‘Oh, Olly. That’s … so nice of you.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s a big moment. You deserve to celebrate it!’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I feel like I’ve already screwed things up with my new landlord.’
‘You mean the scary fashion woman who keeps trying to tell you what to do with your own business?’
‘I mean the scary fashion woman who keeps trying to tell me what to do with my own business.’ I smile up at him. ‘Wow. That was well remembered, Ol. I only told you about her in passing when I last saw you.’
‘I always remember the important stuff.’ He ushers me towards the table. ‘Now, I’ve ordered us a plate of charcuterie and a plate of cheese, but if there’s anything else you’d prefer, I can get them to give us a menu …’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I mean, that sounds perfect.’ I slide into the seat opposite him, and do my best to slow down my hammering heart. ‘Hi,’ I add, with a nervous laugh, that I immediately try to turn into a cough. ‘God, Olly, it’s been ages.’
‘Way too long. Here.’ He pours champagne into my glass. Quite a lot of champagne, and then the same sort of amount for himself. His hand is a bit shaky – exhaustion, I should think, given the hours he works – which is probably why it slips a bit and why he’s poured such big glasses. ‘You look like you need this. What happened with the scary fashion woman?’
‘Oh, you know, the usual … I mistook her beloved puppy for a rat and threw a large piece of solid metal at its head—’
‘Ah. Of course. The usual.’ He grins at me and lifts his glass. ‘Cheers, Lib. And congratulations. On the exciting new move, that is. Not the puppy-maiming. I need to be absolutely clear that, despite our long and happy friendship together, I can in no way condone that.’
‘And I’d never expect you to.’
I chink my glass against his and grin back.
After a moment, it feels like a rather rictus grin and, to be perfectly honest, he looks pretty frozen too – probably wondering what the hell I’m still grinning about myself – so I take a long drink.
He does the same.
‘So!’ I say, brightly, when we both put our glasses down. ‘That’s honestly quite enough about me—’
‘Oh, come on, Lib, I want to hear all about the new place!’
‘Well, then you’ll have to come over some time. With Tash!’ I add, just in case he thinks I’m suggesting some cosy soirée, just the two of us. ‘But until then, there’s really not much to tell, Olly, honestly.’
I mean, in the past, I’d have bored his pants off, wittering on about my hopes and fears for the business, getting him to join me in over-analysing every word spoken by Elvira and Ben. But now that I fancy him so much – now that I can think of other, far less noble things I’d like to do to get his pants off, quite frankly – I’m suddenly a lot less keen to bore him. Not to mention the fact that there’s the permanent wedge of Tash between us. It just feels wrong to seek that type of support from a man who’s – very much – spoken for.
‘Anyway,’ I go on, ‘you look like you’ve had a tough day, too.’
‘I do?’
‘Well, you look tired,’ I say, after studying him for a moment without quite meeting his eye.
‘Oh, that’s just life in the restaurant business,’ he says. He looks even wearier, for a moment. ‘Things are always so busy, and I just never seem to have enough time. I mean, when was the last time you and I actually managed to do this, Lib?’
‘This?’
‘Yes, sit with a bottle of wine and catch up. It feels like for ever.’
‘Well, no, I mean, it is a long time,’ I say, not wanting to remind him that I’ve cancelled two of our most recent planned meet-ups at short notice (just couldn’t face going through with it) and that he’s cancelled three himself (last-minute restaurant emergencies). ‘But you’re right, life is busy. And, of course, you have Tash to prioritize, too.’ I take another large gulp from my glass. ‘How is she, by the way?’
‘Tash? Oh, she’s great. She’s always great.’ He picks up his own glass. ‘I mean, obviously, there’s always the issue of—’
He stops because, almost as if it’s been eavesdropping on us or something (I mean, it couldn’t have, could it?), his phone starts to ring.
‘Oh!’ he says. ‘It’s Tash! Sorry, Lib, would you mind if I …?’
‘Not at all!’
‘I mean, I usually call her around this time every evening, when she gets off her shift at the hospital …’
‘Olly, I don’t mind! Honestly! Answer it.’
‘Thank, Libs.’ He picks up the ringing phone. ‘Hey,’ he murmurs into it. ‘You OK?’
That murmur – low, intimate, the tone of voice you only ever use with your Significant Other – makes me want to cry.
But, thank God, it’s right at this moment that a waiter appears bearing two large platters of food, which he places on the table in front of me. I mean very specifically in front of me, in fact, with a somewhat lascivious smile and an assurance that if there’s anything, anything at all, that I’d like his help with, I only need to—
‘Yeah, thanks, Didier,’ Olly says, breaking off his phone call for a moment to speak, rather sharply, to the waiter. ‘I’m sure she can manage to find her way round a plate of cheese on her own … Sorry, Tash,’ he adds, into the phone again, ‘just fending off an ardent Frenchman … no, no, not for me! I’m having a bite with Libby …’ There’s a short pause. ‘Tash says hi,’ he tells me.
Of course she does, because Tash – annoyingly – is nice and friendly and downright perfect.
‘Hi, Tash!’ I trill back, waving a hand, pointlessly, because it’s not like they’re on a FaceTime call or anything.
And then I make a gesture at Olly, which is supposed to indicate that he should just carry on with the phone call, that I’m perfectly fine – delighted in fact – to be sitting here tucking into plates of delicious cold meat and cheese, and that everything is just so fine and dandy in the world that I’m only inches away from leaping up on to the table and kicking off a rousing chorus of ‘Oh Happy Day’.
Because I think I might need to go way over the top just to avoid giving the slightest hint that I’d actually rather crawl under the table and miserably hiccup my way through ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go?’
This is why I should never have come this evening; why I should just have made up some spurious excuse and cancelled again.
The thing is, it’s not like I’m not well used to sitting across a table from someone I’m in love with who isn’t in love with me back. Dillon O’Hara, for example, whom I remained convinced I was in love with despite the fact that our relationship was a car crash, with him in the driving seat. And not even just Dillon: as an incurable romantic, especially one who spent most of my life convinced I was an unattractive frump compared to my stunning little sister, I’ve enjoyed a long and fruitless history of falling in love with men who wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d been standing in front of them stark naked with a sign hanging around my neck reading Available and Desperate: Please Apply Within.
The difference – the colossal, heart-shattering difference – this time, with Olly, is the knowledge that this isn’t how it should have been. That thanks to a disastrous combination of cruel fate and my own stupidity, he and I have passed each other by like ships in the night.
In fact, it hurts so much to dwell, even for a moment, on the role played by my own stupidity that I think I need to shift as much of the blame as possible on to the Cruel Fate part. Because otherwise it’s just too sickening to endure. Like Juliet would have felt if she’d woken up beside a lifeless Romeo in the tomb and realized that she’d absent-mindedly put a poison bottle next to the orange juice in the fridge. Bad enough her soulmate is doomed to be lost to her for ever; soul-destroying to confront the fact she just should have been paying more attention.
‘No, of course,’ Olly is saying, into the phone. ‘And I meant to … well, what time will you be home? … no, I imagine I’ll head straight back after I’m finished here … OK, I’ll Skype you then … no, of course … of course … of course … OK, bye,’ he adds, finishing up with a swift, ever-so-slightly guilty-sounding, ‘Love you,’ before putting the phone down. His gaze remains fixed on the tabletop for a moment, almost as if he’s avoiding making eye contact.
I swallow, hard. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No, of course,’ he says, echoing exactly what he’s just said repeatedly to Tash. (It’s an odd phrase, actually, now I come to think of it. I mean, isn’t yes the more usual companion to an of course? Still, it’s not for me to analyse it. It’s between them.) ‘Tash is just … well, she’s a little bit fed up with us never seeing each other, that’s all.’
‘Oh, Olly, I’m really sorry. Look, you should go home right now and Skype her—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says, rather sharply. Then he inhales, as if to reset himself, and picks up his champagne glass again, gripping the stem. ‘Sorry, Lib. I just mean that me going home and Skyping her isn’t really going to address the issue. It’s much more about the fact that we live three hundred and fifty miles away from each other and we both work all the hours God sends.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
‘I mean, she’s worked weekends the last three weeks in a row, and obviously I’m always busy too …’
‘Sorry, Ol. Long-distance is hard, I know.’
‘It is. But it shouldn’t feel this …’ He thinks about this for a moment, sadness passing over his face. ‘Impossible.’
He looks so wretched that, even though the cause of it is his missing Tash, I shunt my own pain to the side for a moment.
‘I think you probably just need to find a way to make more time, Ol, to be honest with you. I mean, I know how busy you are, but is there any way you can take a Saturday night off and go up to Glasgow? If you left straight after the lunch service, you’d only miss dinner, and then you’re closed on Monday night and Tuesday lunchtime, so you wouldn’t even have to come back until early afternoon on Tuesday—’
‘Woah.’ Olly holds up a hand, looking slightly surprised. ‘Have you been thinking about this already, or something?’
‘No, it just seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?’
‘Not really. It’s not just that I need to be at the restaurant for actual service, Lib. There’s quite a lot more to it than that! I have the accounts to keep on top of, and all the staff paperwork, and you know I always prefer to supervise the deep clean after Saturday dinner, and then I have all my supplier meetings, and visits from the wine merchants … and all that’s even without adding in the fact that I do like to actually come up with new menu items occasionally!’
‘OK, well, you’ll have to persuade Tash to come down here more often.’
‘She’s a junior hospital doctor, Libby. It’s not really that simple.’
‘Then the two of you have to make it that simple.’ I feel a bit like a bulldozer on full power, but now that I’ve gone down this route, I can’t seem to stop. The only good news, I guess, is that maybe the effort I’ve been putting in to disguise my desire to cover every inch of Olly’s body in kisses is actually paying off. I’ve faked it and now, apparently, I’ve made it. And hopefully he won’t actually notice how massively I’m overcompensating for something. ‘I mean,’ I go on, heartily, ‘you love her and she loves you, right?’
Olly has reached for the champagne bottle and is topping up both glasses, which is why he takes a moment to reply.
‘No, of course.’
That bizarre (and bizarrely infectious) phrase again.
‘So put yourself on the line. Tell her how much you want to see her. Ask her if there’s any way she can get a couple of days off work. Or, I don’t know, meet halfway. That might actually be really romantic. You could book a lovely hotel, somewhere you can have drinks at the bar beside a roaring fire, and amazing room service so you don’t even have to get dressed to go for dinner, and—’
